An article titled, “USA: Viking Ship Discovered Near Mississippi River,” isn’t real.
The bogus article was published on World News Daily Report, a self-described “satirical” website.
“A group of volunteers cleaning up the shores of the Mississipi river near the biggest city in Tennessee, have stumbled upon the remains of an ancient boat encrusted in mud. A team of archeologists from the University of Memphis that was rapidly called to the site, confirmed that the ship is most certainly a Viking knarr, suggesting the Norse would have pushed their exploration of America a lot further than historians previously thought,” the bogus article reads.
The article had tens of thousands of shares and “likes” on Facebook.
World News Daily Report has a disclaimer saying it doesn’t publish real news stories and shouldn’t be taken seriously.
“World News Daily Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within worldnewsdailyreport.com are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental, except for all references to politicians and/or celebrities, in which case they are based on real people, but still based almost entirely in fiction,” the disclaimer says.
The website often publishes fake stories with a focus on scientific or weird news. Some fake articles have headlines like “Pakistan: Cannabis Discovered in Prehistoric Tomb,” “Last WW2 German Prisoner Finally Released from Gulag,” and “4-Year-Old Boy Accused of Hacking FBI Database.”
